"Stay Where You Belong... in My Memories" - Total (Horrible) Recall of Final Fantasy Plots Part II

Here's where I play catch-up on the posts from 2011 that never received their proper second part during my hiatus.  I didn't forget about them, I just don't want to flood the blog with these all at once.

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Sephiroth's mother? Kinda sorta.

Part One of this post is from alllll the way back in August.

I really don't want to think about all of the hours I put into the Final Fantasy series throughout the years.  As technology grew more advanced, so did the storylines.  The Playstation era saw less of the "collect the four crystals" quests and more "our hero/villain doesn't remember his/her past!"  The same thing happened to me: despite the days of my life that were lost to these games, the storylines are but a memory.  I can recall a few basic details, albeit fuzzy around the edges.

Rest of post hidden behind the jump due to spoilers (maybe).

 

Final Fantasy VI - Poor little Terra found herself under the Empire's control, but the perks were that she got to ride around in a mechanical suit.  Once the mind control was broken, she couldn't remember anything about herself.  She meets up with a group of rebels who say they want to help her, and she wants to help them take down the Empire.  Boo-yah!  At some point the group ended up on a raft and made their first of many encounters with a certain purple octopus.  Kefka, who is really behind the Empire's evil plans, poisons a town's water supply and kills everyone, even though he could probably do that with his laughter.  Of course, the one survivor joins your party, as does a monkey boy, twin brothers of royalty, a ninja, and a Grandpa and granddaughter duo.  Eventually it is revealed Terra is part Esper (summon) and turns white with purple hair and manages to lose her clothing in the process of transforming.  Kefka tries to kill the Espers so he an get their magicite (essences).  Something happens on a floating island where Kefka moves some statues which destroys everything.  The awesome ninja will die if you manage not to wait long enough for him.  Actually, in the second half of the game most of the characters are optional, though it would make the final dungeon much easier and you can even recruit a moogle and the abominable snowman!  Kefka becomes like a god and sprouts wings.  The good guys win in the end (expect anything different?)

Final Fantasy VII - This game is full of people not remembering their past.  The spiky, yellow-haired hero Cloud says that he used to be a First-Class SOLDIER.  That is, until halfway through the game you find out it was all lies and he somehow took over the memories of his friend that was killed.  And the guy Cloud looked up to, Sephiroth?  Well, he was a lunatic with mommy issues, even though that stemmed from being lied to for his entire life.  "Yes, you were bred to be a super-soldier.  Your 'mother' was an alien that crashed into the planet on a meteor and killed an ancient race of people."  And he also cut her head off for some reason upon finding her body.  One-third of the game's main love triangle is killed by that same silver-haired, pretty boy fellow, which caused a sea of fanboys to demand a way to bring her back to life and lead to many false rumors on how to resurrect her.  The party's token black guy cursed a lot, as did the smoker pilot.  Sephiroth summoned another meteor, which caused giant beings called WEAPONs to emerge from the planet and wreck havoc.  One of them gets shot in the face by a cannon, but not by the player.  Cloud finally figures out who he is and Sephiroth gets wings in his final form (just like Kefka!)  Meteor hits, but of course, the planet is saved once again.

Final Fantasy VIII - The hero of this game is Squall, an angst-ridden teenager who says "...whatever..." a lot.  He gets a pretty cool looking scar across his face in a sword fight with some punk named Seifer during the game's opening FMV, which is arguably the best part of the game.  Squall has a sword with a gun attached, but he doesn't use the gun portion nearly as much as he should.  As Squall is in a military academy, he has to learn to fight.  The place even had dinosaurs on hand to fight!  What kind of place is this?  He passes some tests, meets a girl, and is sent to kidnap the opposing country's President.  However, a sorceress first possesses and later kills the president and takes over his army.  Squall has dreams of another man's memories, and you get to meet an older version of the guy later on.  As it turns out, Squall remembers nothing of his youth due to junctioning with the Guardian Forces (summons).  He was an orphan along with everyone else in the party and they don't remember each other as adults.  And that evil sorceress?  Turns out that she took care of them as kids, but she was possessed by another sorceress from the future.  To me this game's plot line was overly complicated, and while I remember bits and pieces, I can't remember how they fall together.  I remember going into outer space, and if you didn't catch Squall's girlfriend from floating endlessly in space, you had to try and try and try again until you did.  Where does this connect to the rest of the story?  I don't remember.  All I remember was that it was frustrating.  I do remember that the ending was about half an hour long and a bit trippy.

Final Fantasy IX - After the last two outings went more into a sci-fi direction, this one decided to bring the crystals back into the storyline... but alas, I forget how.  The main character had a monkey tail and the main love interest was a summoner from a race of people that was thought to have been killed off (of course, she didn't remember any of that!)  There was also a rat girl, a guy with awesome red hair, and a strange creature with an undetermined gender that wore a chef hat and ate frogs.  Also, think that the final boss is that weird guy in a thong that you've been following most of the game?  Wrong!  The game's final boss gets introduced minutes before you fight him!  My memory of this game is pretty terrible when thinking from the top of my head.  I guess I'm rather indifferent to the story.  Apparently I didn't think it was terrible, but I must have found it unremarkable in that I don't have distinct memories of it outside of the existential black mage child Vivi.  (Come on, tell me you didn't name the black mage in Final Fantasy I "Vivi" after playing this game!)

Here I'm going to admit that I didn't play any Final Fantasy games beyond the Playstation era.  The first and only time I played Final Fantasy X I was annoyed that for the first hour I barely needed to touch the controller and was just watching FMVs.  Final Fantasy XI was online and when it was released I had dial-up internet.  That certainly wasn't going to work.  (I'm still bothered by the fact that the online games are considered part of the main series.)  I wasn't impressed by the combat system in the demo I played of Final Fantasy XII, so I never played that.  Final Fantasy XIII was released long enough before I purchased a PS3 that I heard enough negative things about it to avoid it.  Also, I don't want to play XII-2 just to see things that were apparently cut from the first game to save disc space.  And XIV?  It's online again, and I have low tolerance for MMORPGs.  (Again, it's also terrible, apparently.  Enough that Square-Enix is still trying to fix it.)  I also never played any of the sequels to the games in the main series, as I questioned why these were even necessary.  Do I really need to know about Cecil and Rosa's child?

Perhaps these games exist better in my memories.